~ Every Book Tells A Story

Monthly Archives: March 2013

Last week, inspired by Pinocchio’s wanderings (see earlier posts), I went rogue. I stowed away in LW’s travel bag for a four-day weekend in Savannah.

How does a library hide in a carry-on bag? Simple. Library spirits can present when two or three books are gathered with intent or deliberation. So when LW threw a travel guide, her journal, and a copy of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil into her satchel, I was there, good to go. I set the rest of my books on “hibernate.”

It’s not easy being a traveling library. I was x-rayed at the airport, stuffed into an over-head compartment, and then tossed into the trunk of a car like a kidnapped victim. Upon arrival at the hotel room, two of my three books were thrown into a drawer where they consorted with a Gideon Bible. I had to hitch a ride with the travel guide and a bunch of brochures in order to get out and about with my facilitator, LW, and her friend, Savannah native VL.

But I did get out, and, no matter what happens in the life of this library, I will always have Savannah. The beautiful old city is laid out on a north-south grid among 22 (once, 24) town squares on a bluff above the Savannah River. Each square has its own memorial such as a statue or a fountain (on this day, with water tinted green in honor of St. Patrick). Veils of Spanish moss, reminiscent of Miss Havisham’s tattered wedding dress in Great Expectations, draped the boughs of live oaks and other kinds of trees. Azaleas bloomed, flowers flowered, and bees bumbled. The air was balmy and the skies were clear. It was the perfect day to sit on a bench and, well, read.

Instead, LW and VL ate lunch at The Pink House (the fried green tomatoes, I overheard, were to die for), and then hit the shops. First up was the genteel E. Shaver, Booksellers, on Madison Square, which sells new books, highlighting the work of regional authors.

LW, already enchanted by the City’s beautiful homes and gardens, selected several books here about local houses and interiors along with some ghost stories to haunt them.

Then she discovered a used books store, The Book Lady at 6 East Liberty Street–our kind of place, with book-laden nooks, alcoves, halls, and stairways to explore. We loved its mishmash of shelving and its bricked archways, fireplaces, sofas, and posters.

LW couldn’t resist a copy of Robert Coover’s bawdy Pinocchio in Venice for her collection. Books about General Sherman (who presented the City to Lincoln as a Christmas gift near the end of March through Georgia) and Savannah natives Flannery O’Connor and Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Lowe joined it on the checkout desk.

And then she saw the cover of Tallulah, Tallulah Bankhead’s 1952 memoir shown at the top of this post. Just the thing for a Savannah memory and a good read, even though we both knew the actress was from Alabama, not Georgia. But Tallulah seemed a perfect symbol for a city which is known for its eccentrics and “don’t care” attitude. I confess, I was smitten by the sultry cover. Suddenly my given name, Willa, which I have loved for its Midwestern connotations of prairie and light, now seemed a rather thin, sallow sort name for a library. Tallulah, on the other hand, evoked a deep-throated slip-clad woman lighting magnolia blossoms soaked in bourbon with ashes from her cigarillo and tossing them (with languor) into the Ogeechee River. Or something. For the rest of the trip I indulged in a new alter ego: Tallulah. I think everyone should have an alter ego or two; they make for pleasant society.

In this 2003 edition illustrated by collagist Sara Fanelli, the text has been simplified. Book comes in box sleeve. Makes me want to spend the day cutting up menus and junk mail.

Not Mrs. Palmer’s Pinocchio. Very freely adapted from original, and I mean FREELY, by French comics artist and filmmaker Winshluss (Vincent Paronnaud). Dark and disturbing, this gorgeously printed volume is a tour de force of cartooning in a 1930s style. Published 2011.

This is one of LW’s favorite Pinocchio books–and mine, too. She loves the gorgeous pictures by Roberto Innocenti for their detail and Italian settings. The language is slightly simplified from the older version Mrs. Palmer read aloud, but the whole story is here. I think it is a perfect choice to share with a child, particularly if the child is not overly sensitive and appreciates a certain amount of morbidity en route to a happy ending. The child should not to be fazed by images such as my personal favorite: the four black rabbits carrying a coffin meant for the puppet should he refuse to take his medicine.

In Which I Climb My Family Tree and Find a Kindred Spirit and Ruminate on Why LW Has Four Copies of This Book.

My exploration of the theme of animating and animated objects (dolls, toys, puppets and such) and that of surrogate families in LW’s books continues as I consider The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.

The hero of this book starts off as an ordinary log of wood who avoids becoming a table leg by speaking up and being heard. In my experience, if one is taken for a mere object, exercising one’s voice can come across as being impertinent, insolent or even subversive. So it is with this talking log, who is then passed on to a woodcarver named Geppetto who wishes to make a marionette with which he can earn his daily bread. A father-son relationship between Geppetto and his puppet Pinocchio is not immediately established (as in the Disney movie), but develops over the course of the book. But the theme of a created familial relationship is still there, as is that of animation–a piece of wood comes alive and wants to be real.

I can relate, literally. In a previous post, I mentioned my tree nymph heritage. Studying the versions of Pinocchio available to me here–Did I mention that I’ve found at least four of them on my shelves?–I suspect that Pinocchio may be from another branch of my family of animated trees that descends from my ancestress Daphne, of Greek myth fame, among others. I can’t be 100% sure that Pinocchio is my cousin, but he is my brother in spirit.

But I am here to explain some of LW’s interest in the book, which goes beyond those of animating the inanimate or creating surrogate families (subjects which, admittedly, interest me as well.) The copies of the books she currently owns, which I hope to display in my next post, were chosen primarily for their wonderful illustrations. One of them has little of Collodi’s story; it is more of a riff on the general Pinocchio theme. But it was Collodi’s original story which made the book one of her favorites.

When she was in fourth grade, her teacher, the genteel Mrs. Palmer, set aside time each day to read aloud to her class. If more than one book was read aloud during this time, LW has forgotten them; she remembers only Pinocchio, and she remembers it to this day as one of the best examples of sheer storytelling she has ever heard, right up there with that of Bill Cosby and, oh, maybe Cervantes.

LW believes that Mrs. Palmer’s book had some illustrations, but she cannot recall any, perhaps because she was not able to immerse herself in them as she might have with a book of her own. Rather, it was the book’s driving narrative of close calls and escapes that stayed with her over the years. She particularly loved how each chapter begins with a preview of action to come, such as:

Chapter 6 – “Pinocchio falls asleep with his feet on a foot warmer, and awakens the next day with his feet all burnt off,” and

Chapter 15 – “The Assassins chase Pinocchio, catch him, and hang him to the branch of a tree.” and

Chapter 17 – “Pinocchio eats sugar, but refuses to take medicine. When the undertakers come for him, he drinks the medicine and feels better. Afterwards, he tells a lie and, in punishment, his nose grows longer and longer.”

Furthermore, Mrs. Palmer would close each session by reading the next chapter’s preview, offering just enough information to leave her class hungry for more.

Collodi’s humor, irreverence, and fast pacing were precursors to those of the comics and cartoons of the 20th century and remain surprisingly fresh even now. Much of the appeal of the book to LW (and, no doubt, her classmates) was that Pinocchio’s adventures were very much like those of her favorite cartoon characters. She spent long hours of her youth in the company of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, Wile E. Coyote, and other scamps very much in Pinocchio’s mold, and those rascals survived worse scrapes than the puppet’s. So Pinocchio’s being burned and hanged and nearly digested did not faze her; she assumed Pinocchio could and would bounce back to meet his next challenge.

Also, Pinocchio’s character was like that of actual children, kids (such as herself) who avoided schoolwork and chores, who lost books, took shortcuts, loved sweets and hated medicine, and who could be careless, irresponsible, irreverent, and lured by cheap amusements. Children who stole, cheated, and lied. He was a child whose fate concerned her, for he was one of them. He was real.

Pinocchio fits another favorite category of LW’s, what she calls “on the lam” books, books in which the main character hides out while moving from place to place, usually in a series of close escapes and preferably with lots of money at his or her disposal. (Robert Ludlum novels featuring such types got her through tough times in the late ’70s). Pinocchio had a knack for escape and survival. That, and a growing sense of relationship and responsibility to others, transformed him into a real boy.

There is a picture in one of LW’s Pinocchio books, a particularly beautiful volume illustrated by Roberto Innocenti, of “real boy” Pinocchio standing on one side of a chair and his father Geppetto on the other. Flopped against the chair, devoid of life, is his old wooden puppet body. Looming up behind him on the wall is his shadow–but the shadow has a long sharp nose. LW thinks the picture is interesting. She’s into shadows. I find the picture disturbing myself and would discuss it more, but the computer just told me he needs to sleep.

Please return for my next posts, in which I will share some pictures of our Pinocchio books and hopefully will not have turned into a donkey.

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”–Lynda Barry

My holdings are eclectic, but my books are usually not randomly acquired. Often, one book leads to another. And another. Which is how LW learned of Mark Twain’s Aquarium – The Samuel Clemens Angelfish Correspondence 1905-1910, edited by John Cooley. In the previously-mentioned Family Found, The Art of Morton Bartlett, Marion Harris compares Bartlett to other well-known creators of surrogate families and private worlds (and favorites of LW), including Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Henry Darger, Degas, and Calvin Black, but also, to LW’s surprise, Mark Twain.

It was in the Bartlett book that LW learned that in Twain’s last years he began a “collection” of school-aged girls. He corresponded with and entertained these girls, whom he called his Angelfish, after some beautiful fish he had seen in an aquarium in Bermuda. He inducted them into his own “Aquarium Club” with special pins made by Tiffanys, and hung their portraits in his billiard room which became club headquarters. (I, for one, would loved to have been a member.)

This was all new to LW, who claims to have read several biographies of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) over the years. It’s possible she had dozed off by the time she got to his final years. That happens a lot. But Twain’s Angelfish years are an under-reported part of his life. LW eager to learn more about them, which is why I now hold a copy of Mark Twain’s Aquarium.

So here’s the basic story: Near the end of his life, having lost his beloved daughter Suzy and his wife Olivia, Clemens was fighting illness, depression, and loneliness. His relationship with his two surviving daughters was strained and, ultimately, tragic. He longed for grandchildren but realized none would be forthcoming. As a remedy, at the age of 72 he began a collection of “pets” (his word)–school-aged girls–to take the place of granddaughters, choosing the brightest and most interesting girls he happened to meet for his “collection” (also his word).

Editor John Cooley is the second cousin of one of the “Angelfish.” Her stories and letters inspired him to learn more about the Aquarium Club. He provides interesting background information about this period in Twain’s life, as well as every relevant piece of Angelfish-related correspondence and ephemera he could find, which is quite a lot. Twain’s charm, humor, and wit are still very much in evidence in these letters. LW thinks that Twain’s Club Membership Rules alone are worth the price of the book. (I recall how, as a child, she loved to draw up rules for imaginary clubs in which she was always designated President.)

The idea of a 72-year-old man sporting about with schoolgirls can be unsettling and raises questions for some, similar to those raised about Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Morton Bartlett and others. LW finds these questions interesting, complex, and mostly unanswerable. But she appreciates the amazing joy and humor in the art of these melancholic men, art created, as Lynda Barry puts it, in order to be able stay in this world.

Before I continue with my bookish musings, I thought I should provide my readers with a little more background about myself, as there seems to be some confusion about my identity.

To reiterate: I’m a private library, a personal collection of books. I also hold some papers, ephemera, and even a few multi-media items. I am made of books, but I, Willa, am their presiding spirit. Books make up my body, but I am their spirit as a whole.

As a spirit, I live in an imaginal realm, on the same plane as the nature spirits of old or, say, Santa Claus. In fact, my ancestry goes back to the dryads, the tree nymphs of ancient Greece. LW learned that the word library comes from the Old French librarie: a collection of books, which goes back to the Latin term for “a chest of books” and on down the etymological line to “book, paper, parchment,” “the inner bark of a tree,” and interestingly, the verb “to peel.”

Reading this, she realized she had found my family name: Peel. So I am now Willa Peel and am quite pleased to be.

So here’s how I came to have a name–and a picture. Early this year, LW attended an Outsider Artists fair. Barely in the door, she was drawn to a book called Family Found: The Lifetime Obsession of Morton Bartlett, edited by Marion Harris. Bartlett, orphaned as a boy, became a solitary, obsessive man with an unusual hobby. He sculpted a series of very life-like dolls (mostly in the 8-16 age range), hand-sewed and knitted their clothing, and then photographed them in various naturalistic poses. The dolls were found after his death, carefully wrapped in newspaper within custom-made boxes, which I find a little spooky, but, OK.

Later, on the other side of the room, LW came across Marion Harris’s own booth where a limited number of prints developed from Bartlett’s original negatives were being sold. LW was intrigued by his photograph of an adolescent girl-doll lounging in an armchair, seemingly absorbed in a book. (A photo taken from another angle revealed the book, to my disappointment, to be Reader’s Digest.) A close-up of this same doll’s face is featured on the cover of Family Found. Later, defending why she blew her vacation cash on a photograph of a doll, LW said it reminded her of the Presiding Spirit of her library. OK, she didn’t exactly say that in so many words, but I knew she had me in mind. I’m perpetually young and curious and into books, too, even if I’ve been around for, well, as long as she has.

Some of the essays in Family Found suggest the dolls served as a surrogate family for Bartlett. Art critic Bill Hopkins surmises that Bartlett may have even given the dolls names and personalities. Upon reading this, LW decided that the doll in the photo, the doll who embodies the essence of bookish me, needed her own name, a name I could share. And so we became Willa. True, I didn’t get to be The National Library of Estonia, but at least I’m not a Morty or a Bart.

After six decades of anonymity, I now have a name. It wasn’t my first choice. I preferred “The National Library of Estonia,” but the name was taken. And (as was pointed out to me) I’m not in Estonia nor am I national. Some might not even call me a library, for which I beg their pardon. What else would you call 10,000* books? Still, nice name, Estonia.

I am a private library. I have a facilitator, LW. The day she puts my books in better order, I’ll call her my librarian. For now, she’s my facilitator, the one who makes new acquisitions, finds places for them (i.e., the pots and pans drawer, under the bed), and keeps after the dust.

‘Willa” was LW’s idea. I liked its Midwestern sound, so I went along with it. (Confession: I sometimes pretend we live in a many-shelved loft in Chicago that overlooks the Lake and smells of wheat and smoke and the perfume of Billie Frechette.) Next time I’ll tell the story behind the name, and it has nothing to do with my unloved paperback of My Antonia that LW lost back in high school, deliberately, I suspect.

Let me begin by telling you why I’m writing this diary. First, I love to talk about my books–What library wouldn’t, given the opportunity? Second, I want to bitch a little: SPACE, PLEASE! or HEY, WATCH IT WITH THAT GLASS! Stuff like that.

But, mainly, this private library likes to play private detective. I plan to explore the life and obsessions of my facilitator, to whom, after all, I owe my existence. I’ll address questions such as: Is there a method to her collecting madness? What’s with that new book, The Love Doll? And what does it have to do with that book about Mark Twain she bought at the same time? And how does Ryan Gosling fit into the story? By connecting one book with another, I hope to trace the labyrinth of our entwined lives.